Vicki and I picked our way through the bodies, when my sister saw us.
“Hey, guys!” Harmony yelled, and she squeezed Vicki so hard, she almost picked my girlfriend off the ground.
Harmony was the only one in my family who I stayed in contact with during the L.A. years. It made sense she would be the one who would bring me back home.
She was an artist, and quite a good one at that. She displayed in a gallery downtown and had so many pieces up, most people assumed she owned the gallery.
She more recently took a job as an art teacher for a progressive school where they had no classes. How that worked has been explained to me multiple times, and somehow I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. It had something to do with learning math through counting pinecones and an educational philosopher named Charlotte Mason.
Beyond that, I get lost.
Tonight, she wore a red and pink floral skirt, a black top with lace and some sort of funky attachments, paired with black tights and brown thigh high riding boots.
“I love this outfit,” Vicki gushed, and Harmony’s face lit up.
The band took a break, so we could hear each other now, but my ears still rang from the noise.
“It’s mine,” Harmony said proudly. “I’m starting a clothing line.”
“A clothing line?” I echoed skeptically.
“It’s still in the early experimental stages,” she qualified, “but I’ve always loved to make clothes for myself.”
I did remember that about her. Growing up, she had a sewing machine, and she collected scraps of fabric and would from time to time make or alter clothes for herself. Sometimes, as a teen, I’d also have her make minor alterations on things I wore. She did a good job.
“Well, how’s it coming then?” I asked with a smile.
“I’ve got a couple of pieces online for custom order,” she replied excitedly. “You should check it out.”
“I will,” Vicki said, “that’s so cool. I can’t believe you have time to do all that.”
“I don’t,” Harmony laughed. “So, I’ve cut back at the gallery a lot and put my creative energies into designing clothes. That helps, you know.”
“How?” Vicki asked.
“It has to do with creativity,” she said, “sometimes you have to switch to another form for a while to get the creative juices moving. Here, let me show you my samples.”
Harmony grabbed Vicki’s arm, and they disappeared into the abyss of the party. Meanwhile, I found my way to the living room around the chatting throngs.
On the way, I got hit in the head with a hacky sack.
“Sorry,” one of the boys blushed at me, and I delivered a quick serve with the bottom of my foot that quite impressed them.
I passed the bathroom crowded with five girls, where it appeared someone was dyeing their hair, and an aspiring young filmmaker was going around recording it all.
“Who’s the new Jerry Steele?” I gestured toward the kid as I saw my mother.
“That’s Ozzie, Brad’s kid,” she said as if I should know that.
I probably should have.
Ozzie perched on an end table and synced the camera to what looked like a brand new MacBook.
“He should fit right in,” I told my mom.
She laughed. “He’s a sweetheart.”
Saffron Irving was tall and slender, with willowy brown hair that reached her waist. She smiled a lot, and tonight she wore a pink and white sundress and brown ankle boots. She loved silver bangles, so several jingled about her wrist, and her brown eyes lit up when she talked to me. Things between she and I had changed a lot in the last few months.
“Good to see you,” she said. “Are you working on anything big?”
“Right now it’s just routine stuff,” I replied with a shrug.
“I saw you on the news not too long ago,” she remarked with a proud smile. “You sounded so distinguished and dignified.”
I’d had to do an impromptu press conference a few weeks ago, when reporters bombarded a client’s arraignment.
“Thanks,” I laughed. “I said a whole lot of nothing, but you should be proud all that theatre training went to good use.”
She laughed. “Now, I heard you’re in Jerry Steele’s new film. Is that true?”
“It is,” I confessed, and I cringed at the thought of her watching the Thomas Jefferson, Martha Washington love scene between me and Vicki, “but it’s probably not going to be a good movie. I’d suggest passing on it.”
“Oh, no!” she gushed. “We are going to be on the front row of the screening at the parade.”
“Ugh,” I groaned and rolled my eyes to the ceiling. “Don’t do that. I’m telling you, this movie really is terrible. I’m only doing because the city council asked me to.”
“Oh, no, you’re not getting off that easy,” she teased. “We’re all going to come, sit on the front row, and we’re going to make up shirts that say, ‘Go Henry Irving,’ with black Sharpie.”
She laughed hysterically, and I shook my head.
“Oh, Jesus,” I muttered. “I think I can probably still get my house back in L.A … ”
She laughed harder at that. Then the band started up again, and someone asked her about a casserole in the kitchen, and she excused herself.
I went into the living room where the band was playing and stepped around wires, guitars, amps, and guys with beers nodding their heads to the music.
My dad was somewhere in the crowd and smiled and nodded as soon as he saw me. Moondust was tall and lanky in his early fifties. When I left home, his hair was a generous helping of salt and pepper. Now, there was considerably less pepper and much more salt. But
